


Wednesday Afternoon

by rufeepeach



Series: Time Of Day [10]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 19:10:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle is always lending her books, and Gold discovers that no one seems to return them. He sets about putting this right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wednesday Afternoon

He always comes early to the French's every fourth Wednesday to collect the rent. Times it perfectly: her father is at Granny’s for lunch, and thinks his landlord will arrive at four-thirty sharp to collect the rent.

So here Gold is, and it’s one o’clock, and Belle should be just about finishing up her studying. Perfect.

There is an almighty crash from upstairs, and Mr Gold looks up the stairs to the apartment above and frowns

“Ow!” He’s on his feet in moments, climbing the stairs as fast as he can. Belle is sprawled on her bedroom floor, books all around her, holding her head with one hand.

“What happened?” he asks, as he holds out a hand and helps her to her feet.

“Was looking for a book. Couldn’t find it.” She has a bruise on her forehead. She fell from a height, and the offending stool now lies on its side by her feet. Gold wishes he could simply turn the thing to ashes with a snap of his fingers: it’s clearly a dangerous object to have around his clumsy little Belle.

“Well, you have a fair few around here.” He says, trying to smile even though his Belle is hurt and it’s hard not to be a little upset by that.

She shakes her head, and he helps her to the bed, so she can sit down. She looks like she might fall over again, and he’d like her to land on a soft surface this time. She shouldn’t be allowed to climb things when he’s not there to catch her.

“Not the right ones.” She stares at the avalanche of books on her bedroom floor.

“Which were you looking for, love?” he asks, taking a seat beside her and daring even to wrap an arm around her. He’s never sure of the rules, here in her home, in her childhood bedroom. It’s easier at his place, easier when she’s a visitor and could be just a guest, a date, a woman who lives alone and makes her own decisions.

Easier when he knows the boundaries - slight, indiscreet, and often broken anyway - when he can throw her against a wall or drag her to the floor and she is the most beautiful woman he’s ever met, inside and out, and there is no life beyond this.

It’s harder here, with her teddies still on the desk and an old poster of some singer on the wall. His Belle is twenty-five, old enough to live alone and have graduated college, were she not stuck here in Storybrooke.

But the Curse keeps everyone trapped and somehow infantile. She lives with her father, the dutiful daughter, and here she is more that than anything else.

Here the near-shameless, confident woman he knows her to be fades, hides away behind a layer of demure pink cotton and innocent little white ankle-socks, and he is an intruder in a dark jacket and blood-red tie. 

But she automatically rests her injured head on his shoulder and curls into him, and so everything is okay.

She murmurs something against his shoulder, and he chuckles, “Couldn’t hear that, love.”

“William Blake.” She repeats, more clearly, “The Songs of Innocence and Experience one you gave me from the shop. I think Emma Swan borrowed it for her son, but that was months ago... I assumed she would have returned it by now.”

Mr Gold frowns, looks down at her confused little face, “The Sheriff stole your book?”

“I guess so. It’s okay, I can get a new copy, there’s probably one in the Library.” She shoots him a brief smile, “Happens all the time.”

“What does?”

She shrugs, “People making off with my books. It’s what happens when you’re a one-woman lending library, I suppose-” she cuts off, stares at him as he makes his across the room, “Where’re you going?”

“Have you got a sheet of paper or something in here?” he asks, and she gestures to the teddy-laden desk.

“Second drawer down.”

He reaches down, pulls out a pad of paper and tries to ignore the butterflies and flowers the border it. Belle is twenty-five, an adult, he’s not in any way a cradle-robber.

“Okay,” he pulls a pen from his breast pocket and heads the list ‘worthless book-thieving scum’, which draws a laugh from her lips, “Start from the beginning, what’re you missing?”

She insists upon coming with him. For some reason, she doesn’t seem to trust him not to murder everyone she knows for petty larceny. 

She beams at him, but he’s distracted from the beauty of her smile by the bandaid on her head, covering the small cut she got as she fell. She’s not concussed, at least he hopes she’s not, but it’s still an injury, a mark on her perfect skin.

And it’s all Emma’s fault for stealing that book. This ends today.

They stop by the Sheriff’s office first.

\---

“Mr Gold!” Emma comes out of her office at the sound of people in the building, and is surprised to see that the pawnbroker is not alone. Isabelle French, the sweet, bookish little florist’s daughter, is stood by his side, looking torn between exasperation and deep embarrassment.

Not the most likely pair she’s ever seen. But she’d heard that Moe French had money problems, so maybe his daughter’s presence with Gold is some kind of repayment.

Emma doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Storybrooke is an intensely messed up place. Granted, Belle doesn’t look at all afraid or resentful: in fact, she wears the look of a girl trying to pull a friend back from getting into a fight on a playground. But still, no one should be forced to spend time with Gold against their will: some things are just plain cruel.

“Sheriff Swan, I believe you have something that belongs to Miss French here.” Gold scoots Isabelle forward with a hand on her lower back, and she shoots Emma an apologetic look.

“Um... my Blake poetry book?” she asks, and Emma’s eyes widen.

“Oh! Shoot, I’m sorry, Henry left it here a while back and I just kept meaning to return it, hold on a sec!” she hurries off into her office, and rifles through the stacks of files on her desk. Emma Swan had never so much as had a library card, let alone friends and sweet acquaintances to borrow books from. 

But she’d been looking for a book to give him that was different from his fairy tales, and Mary Margaret had recommended it. Emma’d never seen the attraction of poetry - she likes to get to the point of things, and quickly, and metaphors and clever rhyme schemes tend to be a distraction from that - but the pictures had looked like the kind of thing Henry would enjoy, and he’d liked it, and that’s what matters.

Finally, her fingers close around the slim, battered paperback, and she sighs in relief.

She doesn’t much care if Gold thinks well or poorly of her, but Isabelle is another matter. Emma doesn’t have many friends, and even fewer who trust her enough to lend her things. She’s not a thief, she never has been, and she’d like sweet little Belle French to know that.

If only because a girl who knows Mr Gold well at all needs to be able to trust law enforcement. Just in case.

“Sorry,” she smiles, “It was under a whole stack of papers.”

“Thanks!” Belle beams, and takes the book from Emma’s hands, “I’m sorry, I was just looking for it today because I have an essay due soon. I don’t usually come collecting like this.” She looks closer to mortified, now, and Emma is positive that this visit was Gold’s idea, and not Belle’s at all.

Her suspicions are confirmed a moment later, “But I do, and I believe that some members of this town need to be made aware of that.” He smiles a wolf-smile, all teeth and glinting eyes, and Emma knows why she’s not afraid: she’s faced far worse than a pawnbroker with a suit and a cane in her time.

But Belle’s small, with a band-aid on her forehead and a sunny, disarming smile. Surely such an open show of Gold’s true nature should alarm her, just a little bit?

She shouldn’t be batting his arm with something resembling affection, and smiling at him with more warmth than Emma has ever seen, and apologising for him, “I’m sorry, he’s not had his tea today and he’s a but grumpy.”

“No problem.” Emma replies, stunned.

They leave, Belle’s guiding hand on Gold’s forearm, and she calls, “Thanks, Sheriff Swan!” over her shoulder on her way out.

Emma watches after them, and vows to keep a better eye on the pair. There’s more going on there than she can gather from one chance encounter.

\---

Ruby isn’t done reading.

She’s not, and so it doesn’t seem fair that she’d have to give it back. Even if has been four months: she’s been busy, waitressing, running away, coming home, swapping jobs and then back again. She hasn’t had time to finish, and she doesn’t intend to return Belle’s copy of ‘The Sandman’ until she has.

Who knew a damn comic book could take so long to finish?

She tries to read fast, she really does, but Granny frowns at her for reading under the counter, and Ruby was never really the book type.

She’d like to be.

She’d like to be like Belle, and read all the time, and be able to date people a little smarter than the high school guys she still hooks up with sometimes. She’d like to be smart enough to go to college, rather than ‘sleep her way down the eastern seaboard’, but it’s not easy in Storybrooke.

She wants to run this place. She’d just like to also make something more of herself before she does.

So she reads, and Belle had recommended this as a starting point for something beyond chick-lit, and Ruby’d held on with both hands.

She’s sneaking some pages behind the counter when she hears a noise.

“Miss Lucas?”

Mr Gold is smiling at her, his dangerous smile, and she feels a little shiver down her spine. 

“Yes, Mr Gold?” she smiles, raises her eyebrows, looks as if she hasn’t just been caught slacking at work by one of the scariest - and sexiest, she has to admit, because damn that man knows how to wear a suit - men in town.

That’s the kind of guy she’d like to attract. But she’d have to be smarter, more cultured than she is now. She’d have to be more like Belle: Ruby’s seen the way he looks at her.

She’s not jealous; she doesn’t know him well enough for all that. And if Belle’s up for it, then Ruby’s happy for her.

She’d just like a chance to date someone as smart as him, who wears a suit and tie rather than jeans and a scruffy t-shirt. Someone Granny couldn’t describe as ‘vermin’ and be right. Someone who’d make her feel like a grown-up with a life and purpose, rather than a stupid little waitress.

“I believe you’re hiding something of Miss French’s,” Gold smiles, and it’s all poisoned-tipped daggers and arrows, “Please return it.”

Belle grimaces behind his back, and Ruby’s tempted to nod and laugh and run, all at the same time.

Then she sees the way Belle’s holding Gold’s arm, as if holding him back, and the look he glances in her direction when she murmurs something about playing nice with others.

Oh ho, when did that happen?

That’s not just a mutual crush, a girl like herself who likes a man with power, and an old guy after a younger model. There’s something else there, something downright sexy, and Ruby vows to find out more sometime soon. There is a girl in her immediate circle who’s holding out sex details, and Ruby will not have that.

“No, I gave that top back.” she frowns, pretends innocence. Maybe this isn’t about the book her hand is still covering.

“He means ‘Sandman’, Ruby,” Belle smiles without a hint of anger or malice, a total contrast to the man who is apparently her knight in downright dirty armor. “It’s okay if you haven’t finished it yet.” she smiles, leans over the counter, “He’s just being a bit of a tool to everyone today, ignore him.”

Ruby stifles a laugh. Well, that decides it: Belle is definitely fucking Mr Gold, if she feels able to talk about him like that. They need a girls’ night, and soon. Preferably the kind where they can get the girl completely wasted and extract all the naughty details.

“You’re being stolen from, dearie, I’m just trying to help.” he counters, but he’s smiling a little, and Ruby feels just a little stab of envy.

Because she wants someone to help her, and care the way he seems to.

She wants someone to look at her like that without peering down her shirt. She doesn’t mind if a guy looks down her shirt, but she’d like that not to be the only reason he’s looking at her at all.

“She didn’t steal! Like Emma, she’s just appreciating a good book!”

“For four months? They’re taking advantage of your good nature, and I won’t have it!”

“It’s here!” Ruby produces the book from behind the counter, afraid they’ll start a domestic in the middle of the diner and Granny will blame her for allowing the landlord to get all pissed off in the first place.

“Thank you, dear.” he takes it from her before Belle can argue, and then turns to leave. He looks as if he’ll put his hand on the small of Belle’s back, push her out with him, but then thinks better of it and simply waits for her outside, chats to Dr Hopper. Ruby tries not to stare at the pair of them.

“I’ll bring it back later,” Belle winks, “I don’t need it anytime soon. He’s just got some issues to work out.” she grins, and Ruby grins back, and why doesn’t she hang out with this girl more often?

“You have to tell me the full story!” Ruby replies, raising an eyebrow.

“What story?”

“You and Mr Gold!”

She tries to deny it, but the blush on her cheeks says otherwise. “Not now.”

“Oooh,” Ruby beams, “That good, huh?”

“Shut up. What about you and Archie?”

“Me and-” for the first time in a while, Ruby is speechless, “Dr Hopper? We’re barely even friends, why would-”

Belle is frowning, but smiling up at her with a look that is suddenly just as sly and dangerous as her boyfriend’s “Just... okay. Fine. But I’d try and do something about that, if I were you.”

Then she spins and leaves, and says something casually to Dr Hopper outside that makes him blink, look inside, catch Ruby’s eye.

He’s cute, for a doctor, all gentle and easily ruffled. Nice, kind. And he wears a suit.

He’s looking at her all wide-eyed and surprised, and then he smiles, waves, a little awkwardly. It’s so sweet that she has to smile, and wave back, and Belle is watching them and laughing.

\---

Mary Margaret can’t take much more of this.

David is looking at her, all wide puppy-eyes and sweetness, begging her to just accept his apologies and let it go. But she can’t, no way in Hell, this has gone far too far for her to ever let them go back.

A year ago, perhaps she would have. 

Definitely, a year ago she would have forgiven and forgotten, let her sadness, her anger melt away like snow in springtime and kissed him here in the street.

But she’s stronger now, harder, and he’s broken her too much to fix it with an apology. She should have loved someone else, anyone else: someone braver, someone better than this selfish, stupid, oblivious boy stood in front of her.

She feels like a teenager again, suddenly discovering that relationships aren’t really about roses and happy-ever-afters. That they hurt more than heal.

She’s glad when he’s interrupted by a small, female voice, “Excuse me?” Belle French smiles, embarrassed. Mr Gold stands behind her, and Mary Margaret shoots a small, friendly little smile to her ex-lawyer, the man who tried so hard to save her. Harder than she did: the memory of his face, eye-rolling and exasperated, after her rant at the District Attorney flashes through her mind. She made his job so much harder than it needed to be.

“Sorry, it’s okay,” David smiles at her, a warm and genuine smile, “Go ahead, it’s fine.”

“Sorry, it’s just,” Belle looks supremely uncomfortable, “Never mind, it can wait.”

“No, it certainly cannot.” Gold steps in, “Mr Nolan, I believe you have something to return to Miss French, here. A certain... manual.”

Mary Margaret watches, gobsmacked, as David’s face turns beet-red. She didn’t know he even knew Belle, let alone was on lending terms. She doesn’t know if he ever even finished Anna Karenina - she guesses not, considering she’d never gotten it back - but a manual?

A brief stab of jealousy gets her right in the chest.

What if he’s moved on from Kathryn to Belle? What if he is still cheating scum, unable of staying faithful even with his marriage over and all his pledges of True Love to her?

“Um, no, I ah... it’s at home. I can go get it.”

“Excellent.” Mr Gold smiles with all his teeth, and Mary Margaret is viciously happy about that. David needs all the scaring the world can throw at him, right now, and Gold is fairly damn scary. “Run along now.”

David does just that, nearly jogs to his car and drives off as fast as his terrified little legs can carry him.

Mary Margaret wants to hate him so badly. So very, very badly.

But she can’t: whenever she looks at him, she sees for just a moment someone else entirely. Someone chivalrous, brave and honourable. Someone who would always be there to catch her, to find and rescue her from the dark, no matter how many the miles, how fierce the monsters in the way.

But then the illusion shatters, and she’s left with this weak little man, making excuses for his mistakes instead of trying to fix things, claiming selfless love in a voice that is entirely selfish.

It makes her sick to her stomach.

“Hey,” Belle comes over to her, puts a hand on her shoulder, “Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine, sorry.” she smiles, remembers something, “Did Emma ever get that Blake book back to you? I know she meant to.”

“Yeah, she was our first stop, actually. I think he’s trying to make a loanshark out of me.” She giggles, and oh shit, Mary Margaret knows that look. She looks at David that way, every time she sees him, for all the good it does her. Emma calls it her ‘schmoopy’ look; Mary Margaret tells her to shut up.

“Oh, good. I think Henry really enjoyed them.”

“Good,” Belle is beaming, “Tell him hi from me when you get the chance, and that it’s his turn to buy the ice cream. He knows what it means.”

She’s such a bright little thing, Belle French. Mary Margaret isn’t sure if she wants to hug her or shake her.

Because she too was like that, once upon a time. She was known for being sweet, nice, without an unkind bone in her body. Then she met David, and the whole thing went to hell, and she’s swearing in her head and feeling vicious little thrills of happiness when he gets splashed by a car, when Regina’s hair gets messed up in the wind. They’re petty little retributions, but they’re more than she ever felt before.

Gold comes up behind Belle, and Mary Margaret is almost glad for the intrusion. She couldn’t handle Belle’s sunny smile for much longer without bursting the dam inside her and sobbing: she feels so goddamn numb, so cold and lonely these days.

“Miss Blanchard,” he smiles, “Is there any chance that Mr Nolan will return anytime soon?”

She sees his little cunning smile, and for a moment she can almost read his inscrutable mind. He’s willing to go after him and bully him a bit more, if she asks. An awkward little friendship has developed between the pair of them since the almost-trial, and it’s sweet that he’d be willing to do that.

“I’ll wait for him, if you want.” She smiles, a little sadly, because she’ll be waiting for him if he asks her to or not, if she wants to or not. 

“There’s no need,” he smiles, and it’s very close to kindness for such an unkind man, “We can fetch him ourselves.”

“No, go on.” she says firmly, nods her head as affirmation, “I can drop it by the florist’s later on my way home. It’s no problem.”

“Okay,” Belle actually takes Gold’s hand - another piece of town gossip that apparently has passed her by, and gee, isn’t it fun to be an outsider in your own home? - and pulls him away, “Thanks, Mary Margaret!” she calls over her shoulder, and Mary Margaret is actually glad to see her leave.

She can’t stand people in love, not anymore.

Maybe this is how Reginas are made.

\---

Jefferson knows that this cookbook isn’t his.

It belongs to Belle, and he wouldn’t dream of stealing it. Even if she doesn’t remember him, even if she lends her things to everyone and it means nothing that he is included on her list.

She brought him groceries, the day after the Saviour came to town and everyone started moving forward.

Said she’d planned to for ages, that in her delivering his flowers once a week she’d noticed he never seemed to eat anything but toast. So she brought him groceries.

People in this town have hangovers from their old lives. Of course she wouldn’t know how she knew he was inept at feeding himself, of course she wouldn’t understand why she has a natural inclination to come and fix his life.

They’d met in a tavern in the old world, and she’d adopted him.

She bought his food with some curious golden twine she carried with her, and he let her sleep in the spare bed in his and Grace’s little home. She cried herself to sleep every night, the four months she stayed with them.

She fixed Grace’s dresses, darned his socks, made their meals and cleaned house like a maid or a mother. And she did it all with a smile, and an admonishment that she knew she didn’t have to, but she wanted to, because this is what people do for those to help them to breathe.

Then the Queen came to town the first time, and Jefferson ran with Grace into the forest. Belle went to take a closer look: Belle never came home.

He looked for her, called and screamed and whispered, but what Regina took no-one could restore.

And yet, every week for six months now, she has shown up on his doorstep and given him groceries. She said to call it repayment for the massive tips he’d been giving them since the first delivery she ever made, and that he needed the food more than they did.

A man in a massive mansion, and he can’t even feed himself.

Regina always overlooks the important details.

Belle lent him this cookbook with her first set of groceries, but six months later it still sits on his kitchen counter, and he can’t return it.

He doesn’t go into Storybrooke, not ever. He can’t risk seeing Grace, and he can’t be around so many memory triggers, people he knows but doesn’t. The one and only time he tried it he almost collapsed, the layers of truth and lies superimposed on each other too strong to bear.

He can’t go to her, and she won’t accept it if he tries to give it back when she comes over.

The bell rings, startles him from his contemplation of an easy-looking recipe, and when he hauls the door open he expects to see Regina standing there. She comes to check on him, sometimes: he knows it thrills her to see someone she has tortured who understands the pain they’re in. The rest of the town is oblivious, and that is far less fun for a sociopath like her.

He doesn’t know how to react, when it’s not Regina but Rumpelstiltskin staring at him, all tearing dagger smile and gleaming eyes.

Belle is at his side, smiling like the world will never end, and he didn’t know that they’d found each other. He knows their story, as well as anyone who has been told it by firelight every other night for months on end, and he suddenly wishes to murder everything.

A common urge for him; he clamps it down hard.

“Mr Gold.” the lie comes easily to his lips, and it’s almost sick how he can feel the Curse digging its claws into his mind, trying to find purchase, “What can I do for you?”

“If you say he has something of mine, I swear to God...” Belle mutters, and Rumpelstiltskin shoots her a look, confused, amused and annoyed all at once.

“He does, dear. He has the cookbook I gave you for our lessons.”

“And so we’ll get another one!” She sighs, and stands between Jefferson and Rumpelstiltskin, shoots Jefferson a horribly familiar smile of reassurance, and turns back to her dragon, “He needs it more than I do. I don’t understand why you can’t grasp that.”

“You can have it back,” he offers, even though he doesn’t know what he’ll do without even a recipe to follow, and he would hate to capitulate to any of the Dark One’s commands.

But he’d do it for Belle. He’d do most things for Belle.

At least, with the look sweeping across Rumpelstiltskin’s face, he would agree on that point.

“No. Keep it. It’s a gift.” She looks Rumpelstiltskin right in the eye, and of course she cannot see his scales, his claws and wretched eyes. She only sees the man she’s come to know, who feigns innocence for her sake and hopes to simply brush the sins of his past aside. Then, very deliberately, she brushes past him and walks down to the car, making a point with every step of her delicate little feet.

Jefferson feels for Belle the way he imagines one would feel for a sibling, a sister both older and younger. She is sweet, and good, and too brave for her own safety. She prefers tameable monsters to safe and helpless and healthy human beings: she likes to bring out the good in people.

Belle has never met a beast she couldn’t convince was really a man.

One day, it’s going to get her killed.

“I assume you won’t permit me to come inside and take it myself?” Rumpelstiltskin asks, and Jefferson can hear that impish little trill behind his smooth and cultured accent.

“This is one of the few homes in town you don’t own, Rumpelstiltskin.” Jefferson growls, and to his credit, the creature before him does not flinch at the sound of his real name, or the threat behind it.

“Indeed.”

“You don’t own her, either.” Jefferson nods to Belle, who is waiting by the car with her arms folded, the book she always carries in her purse open before her, “So if you break her, be certain that you’ll be forced to pay.”

“What would you do, Hatter?” Rumpelstiltskin leans upward, so they’re face to face and snarling, “Keep her locked up where I can’t find her?”

Jefferson just smiles, because really, it’s hard to be afraid of anything when your life is already as hellish as it could possibly be, “No. Not her.”

Rumpelstiltskin gives him an appraising glance, and he almost appears... satisfied. Impressed, even, and Jefferson nods to himself. Rumpelstiltskin is the last person he’d want within a hundred miles of Belle, aside from Regina herself, but at least the creature seems to be willing to put her safety above his own desires.

He’s a monster, and Jefferson knows what monsters do: they keep what they love hidden, locked away where no one else can see, possessive to the last.

But Rumpelstiltskin just nods, agrees, “She’s safe with me.” He says, “I’ll protect her. You have my word.”

And for all his sins, Jefferson has never heard of him breaking that.

He is a liar, a thief, a murderer and a wretched beast, but he keeps his promises.

Jefferson smiles, waves to Belle as Rumpelstiltskin meets her and she calls farewell, and hopes that ‘safe’ isn’t followed by ‘in a pretty little cage’.

Maybe he should have more faith in Belle herself. Regina stole her in broad daylight, after all, right from under his fingertips and yet here she is, smiling and joking with the monster who failed to break her, reading her books like there’s nothing more to do and smiling to the insane as if they’re simply friends over an evening meal.

\---

Belle has had enough.

Really, this has gone too far. It was one thing for him to politely ask Emma, or frighten the daylights out of David Nolan - who really, after everything Belle’s heard from Emma, deserved it - but this is too much. He shouldn’t be threatening Jefferson, not when he’s in such a fragile state and needs kindness.

She’s under no illusions: the right threats made here and there would make her a town pariah, with everyone too scared to speak to her for fear of upsetting Mr Gold.

Jefferson doesn’t need any reason not to trust her: she’s never met anyone more in need of a friend he can actually rely on, and Gold will not mess that up. “Stop the car.”

They’re outside the library, and it’s nearly three-thirty, and it shuts at four.

“Why?”

“No more.” she turns to him, showing her annoyance full on her face, “No. We’re not loan-sharking my friends.”

“They stole, and you ended up hurt.”

“Rum,” She sighs, using what excuse for a first name he’s given her to make a point, “I ended up hurt because I’m chronically clumsy. That’s it. I’m not a doormat, and they would have given the books back if I’d asked nicely. We’re not doing this anymore.”

“Why are we here, then?” he asks, “Why not just go home?” he smirks, that knowing and almost dark little smirk, and a little flash of something entirely unwanted – that has been building all afternoon, and is happily simmering away without his explicit help – races through her, “We still have an hour, you know...”

“No, stop it!” she smacks his arm, but she is teasing, smiling. She wants him as much as he does her, and it is entirely impossible how sexy him just breathing, walking or talking can be, but there are other things to be doing right now. “We’re going in there, and finding copies of the books I’m missing that I actually need.”

She gets out of the car to make her point, and they go inside together, find the few books she’s still missing - a polysci texbook the Mayor convinced her to ‘lend’ her, and the Atlas that strangely went missing that she blames Ruby and tequila for – and until she has the two she needs the most, Belle avoids her lover like the plague.

She’s trying to find a new copy of Men are From Mars - Ruby’d wanted it next, and she thinks it might be fun for their next girls’ night - in the self-help section, when she decides that, no, they’re not going to make it back in time to have some fun, and no, her now-burning need cannot wait until the next time she can sneak out to meet him.

The book she needs is on a lower shelf, and maybe she could crouch to find it. But he’s behind her, looking at something boring about auditing and tax relief, and so it’s more fun to bend at the waist and feel her skirt slide up the backs of her thighs. 

He’s been running around threatening people and defending her all day. And yes, she’s mad that he’s not been exactly sunny to her friends, but still. 

Him being a bastard for her is practically foreplay.

She hears his choked little sound as he turns and sees her, and smirks. Her being a wanton little tease does the exact same thing to him.

Still, she thinks it foul play when he catches her around the waist in moments, and presses her back against the shelves, his mouth on her neck and his hand slipped under her skirt. He wastes no time in getting his fingers into her knickers and flicking his nails against her. She’s a little embarrassed to have him there, where he can feel how wet she is already.

“Hm, someone’s been ready a while...” he murmurs, smirking against her skin, and it’s not really her fault that him being a bastard is a turn-on.

If it weren’t, they probably wouldn’t be together.

“You’re one to...talk,” she gasps, because really, the man must be a magician or something for the things he can do with his fingers. He’s stroking against her, lightly, avoiding the places she needs him most and driving her insane.

Her hand comes from his shoulders and down between them, cups him through his trousers, and he groans against her.

Really, it’s a good thing they can’t spend all their time together. They’d neither of them ever get anything done. Although, truth be told, a life lived entirely naked with Gold isn’t an entirely unappealing prospect. It might be her deepest wish. Maybe.

He moves from her neck to her jaw just before he leaves a bruise: no need for her father to have any evidence of how she spent her afternoon.

He grinds into her through her underwear and his trousers, his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming, hers scrabbling with his flies. If they’re going to do this now, they need to do it fast.

And she’s been ready for him all afternoon: him being all threatening and scaring people is both a pet peeve and a total kink of hers.

She has a feeling her in a skirt and smiling does the same thing to him.

“Are you sure, love?” he breathes, and she tries not to melt against him, “We could go home. Don’t want to rush you.”

He moves his hand to let her speak, “Move now and I will end you.” She growls, and nips at his skin, teasingly.

He smirks, puts his fingers back over her mouth and has himself free with a few flicks of his hand. He flips her skirt up and lines them up, and then just... waits.

Bastard. His eyes are glued to hers, dark and warm and teasing. 

Then, slowly, almost gently, he slides up inside her and starts to move, building a deep, hard, building rhythm as she bounces down to meet every snap of his hips, pleasure coiling and burning in her belly, slow and long and hot. There is something unbelievably personal, and strangely perfect, about him fucking here in the library, surrounded by books written to help people feel better. He is the only thing she needs to feel perfectly happy and content.

He replaces his hand with his mouth, and kisses her long and deep, swallowing her little cries as he increases his pace, hand flicking mercilessly against her centre, willing her to come first. His teeth scrape and nip against her lips, on hand on her hip and the other stroking her core, finding every little sensitive place and exploiting it without pause or respite. 

He holds himself as close against her as he can, as he always does in these moments, blunt fingers digging into her hip so hard it is almost painful, as if she’ll vanish if he doesn’t cling on tight enough. Her breasts are crushed against his shirt front, and he kisses her like he’s dying, trying to devour her whole.

Then she slips a little, and bucks her hips, and suddenly he is hitting that glorious little spot they’ve found, the one that slams her eyes closed and causes her to cry out against his lips.

He stares at her in alarm and puts his hand back across her lips, just in time to prevent her from screaming as she feels herself falling, as he shifts his hips just so and she comes, biting on his finger to keep from crying out, riding him hard as her orgasm washes through her.

He buries his groan in the side of her neck as he follows her, jerking erratically up inside her as he comes down off his high.

Then he sets her back on her shaky feet, and she giggles “Really?” she laughs, “That’s your reaction to people stealing my books?”

“No,” he smiles at her, the warm little smile that makes her forget how bad things could be if they were ever officially together, the one that makes her think he might love her, just a little bit. His hand ghosts over the band-aid on her forehead, tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear, and she tries not to lean into the cares, nuzzle his fingers with her cheek, “That’s my reaction to you deciding enough is enough, and being all decisive: it’s adorable. And the skirt: really, dear, that skirt is borderline indecent.”

She snickers, “I went shopping recently: everything I wear around you is now going to be borderline indecent. Because this is how you react.”

He looks extraordinarily pleased with that news, and hugs her close for a moment. She breathes him in: he hugs her so rarely considering everything else they’ve done to each other. She revels in the feeling of his arms around her, his scent of woodlands and expensive cologne flooding her senses. 

Then he lets her go, and steps away, and so when the librarian hobbles by to finally investigate the commotion all she sees is the landlord perusing the shelves on taxation law, and the sweet little French girl making a stack of the books she wants on the floor beside her.

Then she’s gone, and they’re bursting into insane laughter at what they just got away with, and she pulls him down to her for a light, clumsy, giggling kiss, smiling against his lips.


End file.
